After nearly a day of constant jostling, the viscous fluid sloshing dangerously within the small confines of the portable emergency tank, I had finally been unceremoniously dumped into a much larger pool, big enough for longer-term use by several Yeerks.

This pool's Kandrona source was stronger and more concentrated, as if focused through a prism. This gave my new home a disquieting and clinical atmosphere, and told me the only thing that mattered: I was in Andalite hands, and this was a disturbingly modern and efficient version of the ship-board Pools they once built us.

I had no doubt that it came with an off-switch.

And so I waited. What else was there to do? I could not project my thought-speech far in this form, and dared not morph. It was beyond doubt that the Andalites had me under constant surveillance. They had Alloran now, just as surely as I once had. He alone knew how this isolation, this deprivation of senses would torment me.

My tank, I imagined, was set up in a viewing gallery, lighted from all angles. The walls would be clear so that all might have an unobstructed view of the pathetic slug within. This was the Andalites' cruel irony: I was to be housed in my execution chamber; I was to loll in excessive Kandrona until the moment when it would be taken away forever.

Throughout our long campaign on Earth, our need for Kandrona had been a constant weakness. Even I had become accustomed to feeding only when it had become an almost painful necessity, and so loll I did. Long ago, my ancestors had bathed near-constantly in our star's own rays, but I had long become accustomed to subsidizing on only the barest minimum of nourishment. This excess put me in a sleepy daze, filled with nostalgia for the early days of our Empire. My mind spiraled through memories: my own, Alloran's, some I could not place but had no doubt culled from the mind of some previous host...

Flashes of red: home. Green and blue and white: also home. The mind that had screamed in despair and anger for the past weeks had been shocked into silence. I thrilled in the idyllic scenes from a life I had not yet explored. We were sprawled in the grasses of an impossible world, staring up though four eyes at tangled skies...we were young and impossibly joyous, running across thick meadow into a grove of trees...

And then Alloran's conscious mind resurfaced and I was plunged back into raving despair.

It had never changed. Some hosts, I have heard, come to recognize and accept their fates. Some even join us voluntarily, as with the humans recruited through Edriss's front organization – though such specimens had never failed to disgust me. Alloran, of course, was never like that. Though I had done my utmost to break him, I had long ago realized that he was already broken. It was not that he failed to comprehend my power over him but, rather, that I paled in comparison with his own past: in that contest of wills, it was I who would have ultimately broken.

Despite this, I have often thought of how fortunate the events on the Taxxon homeworld were. Without Alloran enslaved and Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul mysteriously and yet so very conveniently removed from the playing field, our grandiose dreams of the Yeerk Empire would have come to naught long before.

And now, it seemed, the very last of those dreams would be annihilated. As I felt the pressure of the fluid being forced down upon my flesh, I braced myself for death.

----

Curiously, death felt very much like being shot with a low-level Shedder beam.

I felt a brief tinge of disappointment, but then the pressure and mental daze both were gone, and I understood: I had not been eliminated, but acquired. Here was a new mystery to decipher. Were there traitors among the Andalites, then, as well?

We had made the occasional inroads to their precious honor and sense of duty, but why now, when I floated in a self-sustaining prison, defeated? I knew that it had been an Andalite who had touched me - my tank contained none of the residual salts and chemicals that would have leeched off of a human – but which, and why?

Several minutes went by with no further disturbances. Then, what I had been waiting for: the soft splash of another Yeerk body entering my pool.

Of course I realized that this Yeerk was simply that same Andalite in morph, but the many days of isolation had had their effect. In the first confused moment of contact with its overwhelming rush of sensations, it no longer mattered what I knew. This was the flesh of my very flesh, and I was plunged back into our days abroad the ship; I was forced to remember how I had raged against this truest brother of mine, how I had demanded his death. My friend! My first friend, my twin! He was here! I did not know why, but he was here.

No. This was not my brother: this was some cowardly Andalite weakling come to betray his people. This was one of the arrogant giants I had so admired; this was...

‹Alloran!›

It was! Palp-to-palp like this, minds as close as possible outside of a true host, he could not disguise himself from me. A shrewd and experienced Yeerk could have perhaps remained shielded, but not the Andalite I had lived within for so many years.

‹Yes,› he allowed. I felt confusion and fear surge from him: he had spoken in both his own voice and that of a Yeerk, his confirmation of my half-spoken question echoing across our bond. He pulled away and I was again alone.

I did not know what to say. Alloran had come to me? Alloran, who must desire more than anyone my destruction? I did not again approach him; I could not.

‹The boy fooled you,› he snarled viciously, a sudden and strangely triumphant non sequitur.

He could not still be talking about Jake Berenson, the leader of those Animorphs. He had gloated over that twist of fate for so long already; had made something of a game of it at the end, biding his time until I was distracted and then shouting, "Humans!" almost gleefully.

So I asked across our little pool, my voice no doubt muted by the distance: ‹Which boy?›

I could feel him moving slowly in the liquid, still careful not to touch me. A long pause, and then:

‹What? Why is everything so...?› he wondered aloud, bemused and not really addressing me. More languid movement, then he laughed: ‹The Kandrona, of course! Ca...› he trailed off, presumably addressing another in private thought-speech.

After a moment, the mind-saturating rays of Kandrona were gone. I gave a shudder of both appreciation and dread: for now it was better, but was this the beginning of the end?

‹Don't worry, Yeerk,› Alloran sneered. ‹You'll have it back, but I, at least, intend to be able to think. Bah!›

Had he been in his true form, I knew, he would have scoffed his hooves against the ground; I would have done the same.

Alloran! He should have gone on, glad to be free of me – or have killed me and been done with it. Why had he returned? To drive me insane in two-hour pieces?

Still huddled on the far side of the tank, he answered my second question with the thought-picture Andalites sometimes use when they despair of explaining something to a lesser being. I, of course, understood the intended insult quite well.

A small, dark room, all but filled with humans. A rectangular desk; tall metal racks of drawers. The human host sits reading the letter and I, though the eyes of this new human morph, peer at the young human seated near us. He glares back at us malevolently, as if he knows who I am and wishes me dead. But when he should react, should at least be surprised, all he does is roll his eyes and sigh.

"Great. So, no money, huh? Figures."

‹That boy?› I exclaimed, shocked. ‹Elfangor's son? He knew? Impossible! We have studied the humans, their so-called actors – not even they could have reacted so perfectly! He didn't care; he was bored. That boy was useless street tra--

The foreign sound of Alloran's laughter interrupted me.

‹Still you underestimate these humans, Esplin 9466. He knew exactly who Elfangor was, and had a horde of morph-capable humans waiting to destroy us.› Alloran paused, a note of pride entering his voice. ‹His name is Tobias. He is the son of Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul, and he fooled you all.›

Again with the thought-pictures: this time the great bird that had so confounded our scientists. He flew through the air, attacking Hork-Bajir, drawing them to one side - herding them as surely as the humans did sheep - and not one noticed. Then a laboratory, sketched in with sharp, dark angles and little detail. A red light; a blue. Yes, I knew this morph, if it could be said to be a morph when he could remain a bird for days at a time.

‹Impossible...› I murmured to myself, but it was an old protest. Nothing was impossible any more.

Alloran seemed to agree.

‹You think so, Esplin? Then tell me this: you never once questioned the authenticity of that letter. Why? Why would you have believed that Elfangor, an Andalite War Prince, one of our greatest heroes, could have a human child on Earth? Why?›

‹You know the answer to that,› I spat. I surged across the tank to be able to speak to him as clearly as he could to me. I felt his shudder as I latched on to his – my – body.

‹You would never accept it, but you knew!› I continued, ‹He ran away! He could have destroyed us, could have destroyed me, and he chose not to. He left with that damnable human girl -- and no doubt she is the boy's mother, if he is human as you say!›

‹The girl is dead,› Alloran remarked weakly.

‹So? Elfangor is as well, and does it matter?›

‹No – no, you idiot,› he shot back at me. ‹You watched her die! She was abroad the Blade Ship, in the end.›

‹Nonsense,› I replied. ‹A girl? Humans age, Alloran. They double-crossed my traitorous brethren; it was one of the human Animorphs we saw.›

‹Then what...?› He stopped – then declared, inexplicably: ‹Arbron.›

I was confused.

‹...A Taxxon.›

‹An Andalite nothlit,› Alloran sneered.

‹Yes, and what of him? He must also be long dead, no doubt eaten in some pit on their miserable homeworld.›

‹But he is not,› Alloran countered, now gloating. ‹He's here.›

I began to laugh. There was nothing for it. Now all we needed was Elfangor, truly shown up from the dead. The boy Tobias, Arbron, Alloran, these Animorphs, me...the Andalites' Ellimists could not have arranged things better.

‹Alloran,› I asked finally, ‹why not just kill me, after everything? Why are you here?›

‹You are a sadistic monster,› he said almost conversationally. ‹It would have been just like you to know everything, to understand what happened, and just refuse to tell me.›

‹Yes,› I agreed spitefully. ‹It would be. Now leave, my little slug, unless you wish to remain in this form forever. Leave.›

And at the surface, another pair of hands – this time human – reached in to scoop the Yeerk out.

.

.

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[A/N: For what it's worth, I'm not thrilled about resorting to the angled quotes, but I find them least-appalling. (FYI, the codes are "& lsaquo ;" and "& rsaquo ;")